Wednesday 25 April 1666

Up, and to White Hall to the Duke as usual, and did our business there. So I away to Westminster (Balty with me, whom I had presented to Sir W. Coventry) and there told Mrs. Michell of her kinswoman’s running away, which troubled her. So home, and there find another little girle come from my wife’s mother, likely to do well. After dinner I to the office, where Mr. Prin come to meet about the Chest business; and till company come, did discourse with me a good while alone in the garden about the laws of England, telling me the many faults in them; and among others, their obscurity through multitude of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives, and Parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law, which appears a very noble good thing. By and by Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Rider met with us, and we did something to purpose about the Chest, and hope we shall go on to do so. They up, I to present Balty to Sir W. Pen, who at my entreaty did write a most obliging letter to Harman to use him civilly, but the dissembling of the rogue is such, that it do not oblige me at all. So abroad to my ruler’s of my books, having, God forgive me! a mind to see Nan there, which I did, and so back again, and then out again to see Mrs. Bettons, who were looking out of the window as I come through Fenchurch Streete. So that indeed I am not, as I ought to be, able to command myself in the pleasures of my eye. So home, and with my wife and Mercer spent our evening upon our new leads by our bedchamber singing, while Mrs. Mary Batelier looked out of the window to us, and we talked together, and at last bid good night. However, my wife and I staid there talking of several things with great pleasure till eleven o’clock at night, and it is a convenience I would not want for any thing in the world, it being, methinks, better than almost any roome in my house. So having, supped upon the leads, to bed. The plague, blessed be God! is decreased sixteen this week.

17
Annotations

The Royal Society today at Gresham College — from the Hooke Folio Online

Aprill. 25. 1666. . . . mr. Hooke shewed by a terrella [ http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/6792/ ] that the Lines of a Loadstones Directions are all ovalls of wch. the center of the magnetick Globe is the place of contact, and the axis of them perpendicular to the axis of the terella. this was performed by suspending and Letting freely moue a needle vpon a small triangular peice of wood and marking the points of its respect to the magnet all which fell into an ovall. he offerd his - [In margin]Vz thoughts of an hypothesis to explicate all the phaenomena of a Loadstone which he was desired to giue in the next Day. The same [Mr. Hooke] affirmed that he had put all sorts of bodys between a magnet and Iron. and none did alter the attraction saue Iron.

The Dire tiue vertue of the Loadstone was tryed by putting a magneticall needle vnder water where the needle kept the like posture vpo the approach of the Loadstone that it does in the air. (about changing water into earth. -

* The examination of the Epicurean & Cartesian hypotheses was ongoing for Boyle. We might call these concerns metaphysical, having to do with the roots of causation. Epicurus, an atomist, posited a mechanistic explanation of natural phenomena, which were atoms in a void; Descartes, supposing no vacuum, posited invisible vortices (occult forces) as causal. http://snipurl.com/g90sh ("Whirl is all" is a teaching catch-phrase for the Cartesian hypothesis).

"During the 1650s the reformers - Boyle, Walter Charleton, and others - modified their philosophy in the face of the radical threat: in the place of the now discredited occultism they adopted what Boyle called the corpuscular philosophy. This amounted to a Christianized Epicurean atomism treated as a hypothesis to be tested by experiment. The corpuscularians held with Epicurus that the world was made up of lifeless atoms colliding in the vacuum of space. " http://snipurl.com/g8yfl

In the Preface to "Some Specimens of an Attempt to make Chymical Experiments Useful to Illustrate the Notions of the Corpuscular Philosophy" Boyle sought a via media between the Epicureans and Cartesians. (Boyle, Robert, *Certain Physiological Essays, written at distant times, and on several occasions*. Henry Herringman: London, 1661, quoted and discussed in a later edition here http://snipurl.com/g93pc )***

"...where Mr. Prin come to meet about the Chest business; and till company come, did discourse with me a good while alone in the garden about the laws of England, telling me the many faults in them; and among others, their obscurity through multitude of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives, and Parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law, which appears a very noble good thing."

" So home, and with my wife and Mercer spent our evening upon our new leads by our bedchamber singing, while Mrs. Mary Batelier looked out of the window to us, and we talked together, and at last bid good night. However, my wife and I staid there talking of several things with great pleasure till eleven o’clock at night, and it is a convenience I would not want for any thing in the world, it being, methinks, better than almost any roome in my house. So having, supped upon the leads, to bed."

Now there's one of the prettiest images in the Diary...And what a neat thing to greet Bess with on her return from "Operation Pall".

If you had spent "... with me a good while alone in the garden..." wouldn't you have had something to say about Mr. Prynne's ears & brands? I take it, without knowledge, that Hawthorne took the name "Prynne" for Hester in the "Scarlet Letter" because of those brands.

On the other hand, Emperor Justinian I got the job on Roman law done...But he did have Tribonian...And the power to rewrite any law he found a bother. Then again even he couldn't simplify the legal system.

" ... their obscurity through multitude of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives, and Parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law, ..."

Even with today's technology keeping this straight is a monumental task see: http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/AZIndex.aspx . The first four items in the alphabetical index to the current UK "Statue Law Database" date from, 1337, 1297, 1350, 1313 etc.

"The originating text of SLD was derived mainly from the publication Statutes in Force (SIF), a 'loose-leaf' style official edition of the revised statute book arranged according to subject matter. SIF was regularly updated with the effects of new legislation made until 1 February 1991. The date of this final revision became the 'basedate' from which SLD has been taken forward. The SIF text in turn derived from a series of earlier official revised editions, principally The Statutes Revised. The main source of the original text of these editions was The Statutes of the Realm, published between 1810 and 1828, which contained the full text of public Acts of Parliament enacted up to 1713."

The first and second part of A seasonable, legal, and historicall vindication and chronological collection of the good old fundamentall liberties, franchises, rights, laws of all English freemen ... wherein is irrefragably evinced by Parliamentary records, proofs, presidents, that we have such fundamentall liberties, franchises, rights, laws ... : collected, recommended to the whole English nation, as the best legacy he can leave them

Almost all US state and federal statutes have been codified (a few remain orphaned in Statutes at Large and the separate series for treaties, U.S. Treaties). Most federal law is cited by courts and attorneys by the statute section as found in the codification. Some major acts, such as the Securities Exchange Act and the Sherman Act, although codified, are usually cited by the section number as it appeared in the original legislation, rather than as codified.

This may sound confusing but it's really not, because the codes are all cross-referenced to the statutory enactments.

As a lawyer, it has always amazed me that the United Kingdom could run a judiciary without codified statutes.